More on XM

[Howard Glazer]

As I understand it, XM found a loophole in its agreement with the NAB to
allow for the local weather/traffic service. The exact nature of the
loophole is a matter of conjecture -- I've seen various attempts to
explain it -- but it apparently has something to do with the programming
coming from the satellite to the repeater rather than being originated
in the local market and fed to the repeater by microwave or landline.
Sneaky, but legal, as I understand it.

XM -- and its rival, Sirius -- have bandwidth to spare; they've chosen
to limit their streams to about 100 to preserve audio quality on their
music channels. The talk/news/sports channels on XM sound very
compressed and tinny, which is the way the weather/traffic channels will
likely sound. That sort of audio would be unacceptable on a music
stream, so those streams get a little more room to spread out. Adding a
couple of dozen narrow weather/traffic channels probably won't affect
musical audio quality significantly. The hope is that, as compression
technology advances, the quality will eventually improve even with the
addition of channels.

I've been an XM subscriber for about a year and enjoy its musical range
immensely. Unfortunately, it's sounding less and less like radio and
more and more like Music Choice. Each round of cost cutting seems to
cost on-air personalities their jobs. Right now, most of the music
streams are either jukebox-like song-after-song affairs with liners and
sweepers, or hosted by one person who is voicetracked 100 percent of the
time. The most talent assigned to any one channel is three announcers,
and they generally have one live shift each weekday with the rest
voicetracked. I'd imagine XM is a non-union shop...

Howard